An anti-professional vibe runs through Washington
The appointment of Education Secretary Linda McMahon could be seen by educational professionals as a slap in the face. Credit: TNS/JIM WATSON/AFP
Cynical thinking forms part of the framework for “efficiencies” sought by the Trump administration. To help sell the sweeping cutbacks by Elon Musk’s team as constructive, the new White House establishment leans more than a bit on ignoring and even demeaning and dismissing career government professionals.
On Tuesday, the new White House announced the layoffs of more than 1,300 Department of Education employees that will pare the agency’s staff to about half its earlier 4,100 workers, according to the agency.
President Donald Trump calls for killing the department. He talks of “radicals, zealots and Marxists” running it. Linda McMahon, whom Trump tapped to head the department, is a former promoter of fixed wrestling exhibitions. Professional educators from states red and blue can be forgiven for regarding her selection as a deliberate mockery of professional educators from classroom teachers on up.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Wednesday the slashing of 1,000 jobs. NOAA’s professionals were humiliated by Trump in his first term when he showed reporters a weather map that had been altered with a black Sharpie marker to show a hurricane heading for Alabama, which it was not. NOAA accurately said so, but Trump wanted a retraction.
This week, the president, reacting to tanking markets, cryptically called what he inherited “a fake economy.” That’s a bit of poetic license which real economists may wish to explain after years of hearing Trump say high stock prices proved his grand success.
When Trump wanted to get New York City Mayor Eric Adams off the hook on federal corruption charges, he leaned on Emil Bove, an acting deputy attorney general in his now-weaponized Justice Department. The charges had been developed by seasoned prosecutors who quit or were dismissed after the intervention.
Professional practice clashed with this political fix. Neither meritocracy nor competence nor efficiency was at work.
At the Department of Health and Human Services, an important slice of the cuts advanced by secretary and medical occultist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. involves food. The chief of food safety and nutrition at the Food and Drug Administration, part of HHS, recently quit, condemning the dismissals of dozens of professionals. “They included staff with highly technical expertise in nutrition, infant formula, food safety response and even 10 chemical safety staff hired to review potentially unsafe ingredients in our food supply,” the official, James Jones, wrote in his resignation letter.
Kennedy claims he’s acting against “corruption.” Should we believe the politician, who has said heroin helped him study, and who promotes the risky practice of drinking raw milk? No professional expert should go totally unquestioned, but ex-bureaucrat Jones sounds like the one with common sense.
Some but not all of the chainsaw-wielding involves purging perceived anti-GOP bias, diversity-equity-inclusion initiatives, or the eternally incanted waste, fraud and abuse. Certainly, foolish anti-professional and anti-expert sentiment also dwells on the left.
Trump’s actions aim for a massive takedown of the federal bureaucracy. Cutting federal jobs and programs, for example, can provide room in budgets for more corporate tax cuts.
The White House may see fit to call on fiscal expertise dating to prior administrations. Federal budget experts with institutional memory could keep Musk and the cabinet from making harmful mistakes. Beware: Officials who know the terrain are not all subversive members of a “deep state.” They might just keep things running.
Columnist Dan Janison's opinions are his own.
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.